1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to glove dispensers, especially to glove dispensers for disposable thin plastic gloves where the gloves may be retrieved by the user one at a time.
2. Description of Prior Art
The use of disposable gloves is widespread and diverse. Many professional occupations, including ambulance, fire, police, medical, dental, laboratory personnel, and many others, use such disposable gloves for a wide variety of uses and applications. A major limitation to expanding the use and availability of such gloves resides in the manner in which they have been packaged for use and distribution to the ultimate consumer.
Frequently, such gloves are needed either one at a time or in pairs by the ultimate user. Furthermore, in many situations it is highly desirable for a single glove to be retrieved without contaminating other gloves in the packaging. It would also be highly desirable to have a ready means of transporting gloves in a dispenser which could conveniently be used in emergency situations frequently encountered by the ambulance, fire, police and other public safety workers, in hospital emergency rooms, laboratories, and the like, and a dispenser which is easily transported or stored in laboratories or professional offices.
Heretofore a wide variety of glove dispensers have been proposed and implemented.
One such dispenser is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,844,293 issued to McLaughlin where a box-like, generally rectangular enclosure is provided for housing a removably mounted packet containing gloves. The enclosure was provided with a front window and a removable cover or cap. The packet of gloves comprised a pair of faces connected to one another and having a configuration conforming to the shape of the gloves in an open palm condition. The enclosure included means to support the gloves in a parallel relationship being biased towards the front window of the enclosure. Although such dispenser provided a means to dispense gloves one at a time, it was significantly limited by necessitating the use of a packet of gloves having the gloves arranged in a generally planer condition prior to use.
Another genre of glove dispenser is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,773,532 issued to Stephenson in which a package of flattened sterile surgical gloves was provided in a roll form. The roll of gloves consisted of a continuous spirally wound sheet having uniformly spaced parallel transverse tear lines. The gloves were attached by adhesive to the sheet. Although useful in some limited applications such dispensing system suffered significant limitations due to the inability of the user to mount the gloves on such sheet, that is, such sheet had to be purchased preformed, with the gloves adhered thereto by adhesive. Furthermore, such roll dispensers resulted in a greater overall cost to the user in that for each glove dispensed a sheet of plastic and adhesive was also dispensed along with the glove, which then had to be discarded as a waste product of this dispensing system.
Another dispensing system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,677,697 issued to Hayes where disposable gloves were manufactured within two sheets of joined plastic sheets sealed by a sheet sealing treatment. A fastener cut was provided on the sheets and a tie strip extended along the outside of the cuff portion of the glove to aid in turning the glove inside out to form a container to capture an object to be disposed within, the glove was then tied, and the object disposed. An aroma bubble was also located on the outside of the glove and was intended to burst and thereby deodorize the contents tied and sealed within the glove.
Still other approaches for dispensing objects are seen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,658,983 issued to Suttles, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,199,076 issued to Brown. Both patents disclose cup dispensers of generally tubular construction. The Brown patent disclose a dispenser having a helical spring which urges a plate towards a cavity allowing removal of one cup at a time.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,150,808 issued to Vensel discloses a dispenser for rolled paper in which a paper roll was loaded into a cylindrical tube shaped dispenser having a spring operably disposed therein. Such dispenser provided some utility for rolled paper dispensing but was not useful for more flexible objects such as gloves. Moreover, such apparatus did not function adequately except in combination with a specially designed paper roll adapted to be dispensed therefrom which was operably biased by the internal spring.
Moreover, such dispensing systems were impaired by failing to provide protection against casual tampering, the elements of weather, or environmental contaminants, thereby significantly hindering the use thereof in many applications.
More users therefore would find it highly desirable to have a glove dispenser which can easily, conveniently, and reliably dispense one glove at a time, which does not require using pre-rolled or specially manufactured gloves, which is useful in a wide variety of situations, and which may be manufactured in a low cost manner so as to provide the ultimate user with all of the above advantages in an economically reasonable dispensing system.